MLN’s New Board President

Hello! My name is Amy Townsend and it is my pleasure to serve as your Missouri League for Nursing board president for the next two years. I would like to start our time together by sharing a little bit about myself. I have been a nurse for 16 years. Fifteen of those years have been as an employee of CoxHealth in Springfield, MO. In that time, I have worked at the bedside, in home health, and in nursing education. I tell people all the time, education is the best job in nursing! I love being a nurse but when I came to education, I came home. Currently, I am the Chief Nurse Administrator for Cox College. I am married to Kevin and we have three kids and two dogs. Our son Jackson is nine and our daughters Norah and Claire are seven and five respectively. We love living in Springfield and are privileged to call it home. If I am not busy with work or family, you can most often find me reading. I’ll take any book suggestions you have!

I have served on the MLN board for three years. The first year as the Southern Unit Chair and the past two years as the President-Elect. It has been my honor to serve my fellow nurses in this way. I started my time with the MLN not really knowing much about what the organization does for nursing education and long-term care. It has been an education! I am so proud to be a part of what is happening at the MLN. I would like to use these quarterly blogs to share with you what is going on in the world of nursing in Missouri and how you can be involved. Please reach out to us and let us know if there is something you are interested in hearing more about.

We have just wrapped up our annual long-term care and student conventions. What a great time this was for our students and nursing home administrators! We were honored to have Loretta Manning from ICAN Publishing and Pam Hargett from Hurst Review work with the students on making challenging content make sense. We also held our first annual 5K run/walk to benefit the nursing student scholarship fund. This year’s scholarship recipient was Maddie Scheibal. Maddie is a student at Sinclair School of Nursing. Congratulations Maddie! If you are a nurse educator I highly recommend bringing your students next year to the student convention, April 9 – 10. It is a great time and the students have the opportunity to interact with various potential employers across the state. Additionally we encourage all member schools to appoint MLN Student Ambassadors. This is a great resume builder for them and the opportunity to work within a professional organization.

I am looking forward to the annual nurse educator convention in Branson in June. If you haven’t had the opportunity to attend I highly encourage it! This is a great opportunity to connect with other nurse educators around the state. So much learning can happen when we just connect face to face and dialogue about the victories and challenges we encounter every day. For the first time, the MLN is offering a group rate for schools who bring 7 or more faculty. You won’t find a better cost for a convention with nationally known speakers.

There has never been a better time to be a member of MLN. Organizational memberships for schools are very reasonable when you consider the benefits gained. For example, when a school is an organizational member, all of your students are members! This membership affords them discounted rates for convention and other education. Additionally, those students will remain members for the first year following graduation at no additional cost to them. Other benefits include access to job postings, continuing education, networking and online professional growth.

Again, I would like to thank the board, staff, and membership of the MLN for the opportunity to serve you. I look forward to working together and I know we can do great things for nursing in Missouri. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you need anything. We are here for you!